


Cat Burglars

by Elizabeth Tudor (Liz_Tudor)



Category: Lupin III
Genre: All the petting, Blue Jacket, But let's start here, Cats, Cuddles, F/M, Fluff, Fujiko's a dog person, Fujiko/Rebecca if you squint, Gang polyamory, Goemon may be slightly OOC, Heavy Petting, Let's blame it on the sake, Lupin gets jealous, Lupin is a cuddly fuck, M/M, Metaphorical Fluff, Metaphorical petting, Multi, Non-Explicit Sex, OT4 is my total ship, OT5 if I can wrangle it, Petting Hair, This is really fluffy okay?, gelato, literal fluff, petting, petting cats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 19:02:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19046479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liz_Tudor/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Tudor
Summary: When a target's pet cat threatens to blow their cover, Jigen...handles it, with his usual efficiency.Featuring a grumpy Lupin, a Fujiko who knows better, and a Goemon who just wants to get to pet cats. Gang polyamory, and as fluffy as a Norwegian forest cat. No animals were harmed in the making of this fic.





	Cat Burglars

**Author's Note:**

> If pressed to choose a single character in the series, I suppose I'm a Jigen fangirl, if only because he's one of the easiest for me to write, but I just adore all of these glorious idiots so much, and my end goal is for all four, possibly five of them to just be in one big happy cuddly polyamorous pile of fluff and thievery.
> 
> ...except that Fujiko would snap at Jigen to stop getting smoke in her face, and Lupin would accidentally kick Goemon while trying to make them stop fighting, and Zenigata would remember that he's supposed to be arresting these weirdos...
> 
> So here's this instead. =)

"Ready?" Lupin muttered, and at his side, Jigen nodded, hand on his gun. He didn't expect to need it, but it didn't pay to take chances. Silently, Lupin pressed the last of the lock's tumblers into place, and swung the mansion's door open.

 

Nothing. No alarms, no searchlights, no guards leaping out of the shadows, and, for better or worse, no Zenigata. Jigen's eyebrows rose under the brim of his hat. The cops were really falling behind on the job, Lupin had sent an advance notice and everything. Well, he at least wasn't complaining. He'd never been crazy about his partner's obsessive need to announce his crimes ahead of time, and if they could be gone before the police got here, he'd more happily drink to their success from several miles away than from inside a cell.

 

"Kitchen?" Jigen confirmed, and Lupin nodded. He'd charmed their way past the first security system, but the alarms for the safe were on an independent network, and they'd have to turn those off before collecting what they'd come for.

 

There was no reason to think that the mansion was unoccupied, but they saw no signs of anyone as they flowed through the halls, silent as the shadows their dark pullovers made them resemble. This was one of the easiest jobs they'd pulled this year, Lupin congratulated himself as they wound through the maze of corridors, looking for the kitchen and the staircase down to the basement. Everything was running as smooth as oiled silk, and with any luck at all, they'd be drinking a toast to their success with Fujiko and Goemon in an hour flat.

 

It was as he was wondering which wine to open for the occasion that an unearthly howl split the still air. Lupin jumped so badly he crashed into Jigen, the gunman yelping in pain as the thief came down on his foot, and both of them spun wildly, searching for the source of the hair-raising screech. Another lightning bolt shriek of sound, and Jigen was the first to spot the small grey cat crouched at the end of the hall, its tail lashing.

 

"That thing'll wake the whole house if we don't shut it up!" Lupin hissed. Jigen tipped his hat back, surveying the cat. As he stepped forward, his shadow falling over the little animal, it chirped in alarm, ears coming up at attention, trying to decide whether to flee or hold its ground. Its hesitation cost it though, and before it could decide to run, Jigen's broad hands were around its shoulders and belly, holding it in place.

 

"I'll take care of it."

 

***********************************

 

"Was that really necessary?" Lupin grumbled, wiping his streaming nose. "There had to be a better way of keeping the cat quiet. Couldn't you have just locked it in the hall closet or something?"

 

"Have you ever tried locking a cat in?" Jigen scoffed, adjusting his grip. "They'll just howl louder. Nah, this was the best option." In his arms, the cat purred blissfully, two furry little paws perched on his shoulder as it nuzzled against his chin. The gunman grinned. "'Sides, it's pretty cute."

 

"How are you going to disable the alarms if you're holding that thing though?" Lupin quibbled. "That's the entire reason we needed two people, we need to turn both circuits off simultaneously, or it'll trigger the silent alarm!"

 

"Relax, I can do it one-handed," Jigen shrugged. "It's worth it to keep the cat quiet."

 

Quiet was relative, Lupin thought gloweringly. Sure, the feline has stopped yowling like a banshee at the stream, but the purring vibrating its way out of that tiny body sounded as loud as an idling engine. Even as he watched, the furry little head nudged enthusiastically against his partner's beard, before darting out a tiny pink tongue to lick his ear. Jigen squirmed faintly, settling the cat more securely against his shoulder.

 

"Heh, tickles."

 

Lupin's scowl deepened. This was an unnecessary distraction. If Jigen was focused on their target's damn house pet, he _wasn't_ focused on their job.

 

"Any day you feel like getting back to business," he said tartly. Jigen paused, glanced at him.

 

"Are you actually _jealous_?"

 

"I am not jealous of the stupid cat!"

 

Okay, maybe just a little. He couldn't help being just a bit resentful whenever Jigen started paying too much attention to anything that was not him. Fujiko, he knew damn well would never be exclusive with him or anyone else; their relationship, such as it was, happened entirely at her convenience. And several times he'd almost driven Goemon away by being too clingy and pushing for too much, too fast. But Jigen at least was supposed to be completely his, the most reliable of his friends and lovers, and he couldn't help resenting it a little bit whenever he had to share him. Although he'd taken care never to say anything, it'd taken him a while to stop bristling and getting defensive even when Jigen and Goemon went off together.

 

" _Sure_ ," Jigen grinned, his eyes glinting with amusement. Just to pour salt in the paper cut, he reached up to stroke the cat's ears, and it arched into the touch, paws kneading happily on his shoulder.

 

"The way you carry on with that thing is embarrassing," Lupin sniffed, striding along the hallway to the kitchen. "If the police show up, I don't know you."

 

"Oh, so we both just happened to break into the same mansion, dressed in black and carrying lock picks?"

 

" _Yes_."

 

He could hear the low rumble of laughter from behind him, and he was glad it was too dark for Jigen to see the tips of his ears turn pink.

 

"If you bring that thing home, you're fired," the thief grumbled. "I'm allergic." He probably could've kept a little more dignity by staying silent... but that had never stopped him before, and probably wouldn't stop him anytime in the foreseeable future either.

 

"You're allergic to _everything._ An' you can't fire me." He could hear the smirk in his partner's voice even over the purring. "You're the one who set my contract for the next fifty-three years, r'member?"

 

"That was clearly a mistake," he groaned. When he'd first recruited Jigen, the gunman, distrustful and deeply suspicious, had insisted on having a contract. _As if this was some kind of normal job? **Please.** _But Lupin had complied. He'd been glad of it later, he was pretty sure Jigen would have left a dozen times in that first year if he hadn't been bound there. But the former hitman had signed it again the year that followed, and the one after that too. By the fourth year, they both only remembered to update the contract sporadically, and a few years ago, Lupin, tired of dealing with this rigmarole, has set the next one for some arbitrarily large number so that they wouldn't have to worry about remembering it. _Of freaking course Jigen actually remembers how long it was for._ He still hadn't left though, so that was something.

 

They found one kitchen, which turned out to be the wrong kitchen, and a few minutes more of searching turned up the right one. Jigen was still snorting when Lupin jimmied open the door to the basement and the electrical panel. _Really, how many kitchens could these people need? When they probably never set foot in them anyway._ At least their cat was cute. That was one point in their favor.

 

The bank of circuit panels that ran the house's electricity spanned a full concrete wall, and Lupin quickly picked out the two they needed to turn off, to shut off power first to the server that monitored the alarms, and then to the alarms themselves. He quietly pointed out what needed to be done, and Jigen cracked his open to find at least four buttons he'd have to press simultaneously, and a key that had to be turned to kill the power. Not hard, when you weren't holding a cat, but there was no way he'd be able to do it one-handed.

 

"Dammit," the gunman muttered, and glanced at Lupin.

 

"I'm not taking the damn cat!"

 

"Fine," Jigen groaned, and his partner bit back a smirk. Jigen would _have_ to set the stupid thing down now. Instead, the gunman shifted slightly, tilting his shoulders and raising the arm the cat was resting on, and it very obligingly flowed over his sweater and settled around his shoulders like a furry scarf, still purring ecstatically. Lupin scowled, Jigen smugged, and a minute later, the alarm system was offline.

 

"Not fair," Lupin grumbled, glaring at his partner's back as they left the kitchen. Two bright green eyes stared back at him, glowing through the curtain of dark hair.

 

"Will you relax?" Jigen asked impatiently, checking rooms along the left-hand side of the hall. "The cat shut up, the alarms are off, everything's going well." He paused, frowning at what looked like the same drawing room he'd just seen. "Are you sure your floorplan was right?"

 

"Of course it was!" Lupin exclaimed, peering around the door. "If that's the Georgian-style drawing room, then the gallery with the safe must be..." He opened a door to reveal an elegantly appointed powder room. "...damn."

 

The blueprints he'd gotten, Lupin decided grimly, were fakes, doctored, or drawn by a madman, and none of those options did anything to help the mounting irritation burning through his sinuses along with the cat dander. Time to throw the plan out the window and improvise. That was usually when he did his best work anyway. And sure enough, a few randomly chosen doors slammed open later, the gallery emerged.

 

"Okay, this has gotta be the right room. Which means the safe...should be behind that painting," he declared, pointing to a rather vapid Hera rendered in oils doing something unpleasant to one of Zeus's many mistresses. The cat still perched on his shoulders, Jigen ran his long calloused fingers along the edges of the frame until he found the catch, and the whole thing swung forward.

 

"Excellent."

 

Before getting started sweet-talking the safe open though, Lupin paused, surveying his partner and the purring hitchhiker. The gunman, usually so fastidious about his suits, seemed completely unconcerned that his shoulders and one side of his chest were now matted grey with cat hair.

 

_I am going to be sneezing the entire damn way home._

 

"Just so you know, I'm not kissing you until after you've gotten rid of the cat hair," Lupin glowered. To his consternation, Jigen just shrugged, unconcerned, the cat following the smooth movement of his shoulders.

 

"Eh, that's fine. I'll need to shower after this anyway, the greasepaint gunks up my beard otherwise."

 

_I can't believe I'm losing ground to a cat!_

 

This wasn't the first time this had happened either. Anywhere they went, animals seemed to take a liking to Jigen, and, when he was around, Goemon. Stealing the cursed sword from a castle in some tiny European country he couldn't remember or pronounce the name of, the estate's mastiff had come barreling down the drive towards them, growling like a demon...and then had stopped as soon as it scented Jigen, butting its massive head against his leg and following them, as docile as a lobotomized lamb, until they climbed in through a carefully jimmied window.  A troupe of monkeys that had hissed and snarled at Lupin as he tried to steal the gem from a shrine had quieted down as soon as Goemon showed up, allowed the samurai to lead them outside and spent a placid hour running their fidgety little hands through his hair or catching the bits of mochi he threw them. That tiger in the circus too, and Fujiko swore it was the same one that had tried to maul her, had curled happily into an enormous orange-furred settee while Jigen scratched its ears. There were exceptions, of course: guard dogs that remembered they were supposed to snarl at anything that came near; Josefine, who had disliked Jigen as immediately as she'd taken to Goemon; and one particularly troublesome bear outside Hokkaido that had destroyed their campsite and growled so ferociously that they universally decided to just let it have the shredded remains of their tents, and spent the rest of the week shivering in the drizzle until the search died down and they could risk heading back into civilization. But by and large, the number of animals that greeted the two assassins as long-lost friends greatly outnumbered the ones that stayed suspicious and aggressive.

 

"Why do animals like you so much?" the thief groaned. "Every time, as soon as they see you, they're all purring and happy and cuddly." Jigen shot him a sideways grin.

 

"Most animals like me, most people don't. You liked me pretty immediately too. What's that say 'bout you?"

 

His partner refused to rise to that bait, but continued grumbling as he carefully teased open the safe.

 

"Ahh! Success!"

 

Feeling happier than he had since the cat showed up, Lupin snagged the little statuette and stuck it in his carefully padded backpack. He hadn't heard anything from Fujiko and Goemon so far; assuming all went well and they'd secured the other statue of the pair, they could screw the bases together to crack the code, and be ready to fence them in a week, the treasure already in hand.

 

"Ready to go?" Lupin asked, setting a maniacally grinning little figurine of himself making a rude gesture in the statue's place, and swinging the safe door and the painting shut. The sooner they got out of here, the better. After watching Jigen dote on that damn cat, he was feeling rather in need of some cuddles and petting himself.

 

"I 'spose," Jigen shrugged, with somewhat less enthusiasm than Lupin would've expected.

 

"Just come on," the thief growled, stomping off towards the door and very deliberately not looking back to see if his partner was following or not.

 

At the door, Jigen paused, gently extracting the cat from its perch around his shoulders. It gave a sleepy mew of protest, then gave up the fight and curled into the crook of his arm, already dozing again. Jigen stroked its ears regretfully.

 

"Gotta set you down now," he sighed. "Shame you can't come back with us, you're pretty cute."

 

"You don't spend that much time telling _me_ how cute I am," Lupin huffed, glaring, and Jigen shot him an arch look.

 

"I see _you_ every damn day. I don't get to pet cats every day, this is an occasion. You're also a lot less fluffy and fun to pet," the sniper added as an afterthought.

 

"That is an out and out lie!"

 

"Not my fault you shaved your chest hair for that last job," Jigen laughed quietly, finally, finally setting the cat down.

 

Lupin sulked and sneezed all the way back to their current hideout, to find that Fujiko and Goemon had beaten them there by five minutes, the matching statuette sitting proudly on the marble counter. They'd been staying in an abandoned auto shop until Fujiko had showed up, and made it clear that she had no intention of living somewhere that didn't have a working shower, and Lupin, predictably, had immediately booked the most expensive two-bedroom apartment he had been able to find on short lease. It wasn't a total wash though, Jigen figured. The new place had come with a well-stocked fridge, a very comfortable couch, and an even more comfortable king-sized bed, and they'd even managed to fix the Fiat before moving camp, so overall it wasn't a bad deal.

 

"By the by, Jigen," Fujiko called, "I'm meeting Rebecca later. D'you still have Robson's RPG? He's been asking about it."

 

"RP...? Shit, I think I might've left it at that safe house in Prague," the gunman yawned, putting his set of lock picks away. "I'll get it next time we're back there."

 

"If he keeps asking, I'm giving him your number so he can bother you about it instead," Fujiko warned, stripping out of her motorcycle jumpsuit and ignoring Lupin's wolf whistle. Jigen pulled a face, but didn't argue.

 

"So how'd it go on your end?" she asked, scrubbing the greasepaint off her face and slipping into a leaf-colored silk dress. Lupin's ardent attention wavered now that she no longer had quite so much skin on display, and he rolled his eyes pointedly.

 

"Went fine, except that Jigen had to spend the entire time petting the target's cat to keep it quiet."

 

"Yours had a cat?"

 

Lupin didn't miss the faintly longing note in the samurai's voice, but it didn't stop him from scowling. "Yeah, and the damn thing spent the entire job in Jigen's arms. How are we supposed to be top international thieves if we're taking time out of the jobs to pet cats?"

 

"We _are_ top international thieves, so we get to do whatever the hell we want," Jigen asserted. "Including petting cats. 'Sides, it kept the cat quiet, didn't it?"

 

"Irrelevant," Lupin grumbled, knowing he was beat. "Anyway, weren't you supposed to go take a shower so that I can kiss you without choking on fur?"

 

Jigen shrugged, and was on the point of stripping off his fur-covered turtleneck, when he caught the melancholy look the swordsman still wore.

 

"You miss Josefine?" he asked, as perceptive as always. Goemon shifted, blushing faintly.

 

"Perhaps a little."

 

"The house wasn't hard to break into," Jigen mused. "I even remember the door codes. An' it was a really cute cat." He glanced up to find Goemon watching him, a little wistfully. "Wanna go back?"

 

" _Yes._ "

 

"Oh come on!" Lupin exclaimed, throwing his hands up. "You two are going to break back into a heavily guarded mansion _, that we just robbed_ , to pet a _cat_?!"

 

"Yes," Goemon said simply. "I like cats."

 

"We've broken into places to do weirder shit than that before," Jigen shrugged.

 

"Why can't you two go to an animal shelter or something like normal people?!"

 

"You wouldn't keep us around if we were normal," Goemon told him serenely.

 

"An' you were the one who wanted us to _stop_ going to animal shelters and pet stores," Jigen pointed out. "You said you were sick of reverse-stealing all the strays we came back with."

 

"A thief breaks into a house to steal something, that makes sense," Lupin grumbled, refusing to concede the point, "but a couple of assassins break in to pet a cat?!"

 

"Why not? If we went to a shelter, there's way too much risk we'd come home with half a dozen rescues each," Jigen smirked, grabbing his lock pick set again. "An' we already had the conversation about why our lifestyle ain't conducive to having pets, blah blah blah. This is safer."

 

"You're not going to be able to talk them out of it, Lupin," Fujiko sighed, scooping herself out a bowl of raspberry gelato as they headed out the door. Lupin made a move to protest, until her fingers closed gently around his wrist, keeping him in his seat. "Just let them go pet the damn furball, we won't be able to get a start on cracking the code until tomorrow anyway."

 

"Is that because you and I will be soooooo busy tonight?" he grinned, leaning across the counter. She rolled her eyes, and stuck the last spoonful of gelato into his mouth to muzzle him before grabbing another spoon for herself.

 

"Nooooooo, it's because Rebecca invited me to the after party of her latest fashion show, so I'm going to catch up with her for the last few hours of that," Fujiko told him around bites of the dessert. "I'm leaving as soon as I've finished. Don't expect me back until morning. Maybe late morning," she added, scraping the bowl. She licked the last of the dark pink gelato off her spoon, savoring the sweet tang and enjoying the visual contrast of the flower-colored dessert and the silvery spoon and the glossy, grey-veined marble counter. She had dessert, her new dress fitted her exactly as well as she'd hoped, she was about to go meet an old friend for an enjoyable few hours of cocktails and drawing envious stares, and she had the prospect of an enjoyably challenging puzzle, with a nice fat payoff for solving it, waiting for her in the morning, along with all three of her boys. Life was good. Even Lupin's sulking couldn't spoil her mood.

 

"No fair," Lupin pouted, licking away the last of the raspberry cream on his spoon. "I'm dating three people, and I'm still the only one who isn't getting any tonight." What was the point of being the boss if your gang promptly ditched you every time a cute cat or an old friend showed up? He wasn't stupid enough to actually think he could get away with having the entire gang as his harem, waiting at his beck and call, but he was selfish enough to _wish_ he could. They were entirely too prone to wandering off with each other, or with any old flames who turned up; he much preferred them to be _here_ , with him, preferably in bed, or at least somewhere he could actually keep an eye on everyone. It made him...a little more anxious than he really liked to admit, when they were gone for too long.

 

"I'm sure Goemon and Jigen will be perfectly happy to cuddle you after they get back and they've showered," she laughed, running her bowl under the faucet. "I don't know why they want a pet anyway, you're as much work as any puppy."

 

"Hmmmph," Lupin grumbled, his chin sinking onto his hands. " _You_ wouldn't stop in the middle of a heist to pet a cat, would you, Fujiko-chan?"

 

"A cat?" she shrugged. "Nope. They creep me out. A dog...maybe. If there was a cute borzoi or St. Bernard that seemed friendly, I'd be tempted, you know I'm a dog person."

 

"Hmmmmmph," the thief grumped again, still hoping that he might be able to guilt her into staying and showering him with attention. Fujiko made sure to kiss his forehead on the way out.

 

"I'm completely abandoned," he told himself morosely as Fujiko shut the door behind her. "Not even Pops showed up. Even _he_ doesn't care about me anymore." He debated going out and finding a club or something, but he just wasn't in the mood for some random stranger, no matter how attractive, that he'd have to chivvy away from the piles of blueprints and gadgets and disguises. He didn't want a one-night stand, he wanted _his_ gang. Who had deserted him.

 

Dessert sounded good though. Feeling sorry for himself was exhausting work. More gelato might help.

 

He and Fujiko had eaten the last of it. Lupin sulked for another half an hour, then went to bed to sulk there.

 

***********************************

 

It was nice, Jigen decided, watching Goemon happily stroking the cat draped over his lap, to see the youngest member of their gang openly enjoying himself. Goemon was so damn intense about everything; his training, his honor, his clothes, his ancestors, hell, even his food - it was nice to see him relax for once, to see sharp, angry planes of his face lighten into a small smile, making him look less like the physical embodiment of vengeance and more like the early-twenty-something kid he was. Jigen knew it couldn't possibly last - he wouldn't be the Goemon they knew if he could let himself relax for long, and their lifestyle didn't exactly lend itself to slacking off - but it just made the few quiet, peaceful moments they did manage to scrape out that much more valuable.

 

"I suppose we should leave," the samurai sighed finally, when the distant, foggy sounds of police sirens started to crystallize, glittering and sharp as fractured glass. "It seems they finally found Lupin's note." He spared a moment to give the purring cat one last stroke from ears to tailtip before regretfully shooing it off his lap.

 

"Took 'em long enough," Jigen laughed softly, struggling to his feet. He was getting too old and rickety to be spending hours sitting cross-legged on the hallway floor, but it had been well worth the pins and needles, he decided as he shook some feeling back into his legs. He tried not to be _too_ envious as Goemon rose in one fluid motion. T'be fair, even at twenty-three or twenty-four he probably still wouldn't have been able to do that. Maybe it had something to do with sitting under waterfalls. "C'mon, I know a decent ramen place that's open late."

 

The two assassins were blocks away by the time the police finally arrived, sitting down to a very late dinner well away from any windows, and congratulating themselves on an all-around successful night. Maybe it was the sake, Goemon wondered later; it had been better than he'd expected, and he'd had several cups of it. Maybe it was just the brisk night air, and the warm thrill of a job going perfectly. Whatever it was, after paying and taking their leave, he found himself in no hurry to get home despite the late hour. Thankfully, Jigen seemed to share the opinion, ambling easily along, brushing against him as they threaded through the narrow streets, pace getting slower and slower still until they finally drifted to a halt on a quiet street corner, enjoying each other's company and the satisfaction of having just finished a job and the damp, clean chill night air.

 

"Thank you, for this," Goemon said thoughtfully, leaning back to watch the way the city lights played across the bruised purple undersides of the clouds. "It's one of the very few things I regret about our lives, that having pets is simply too impractical."

 

"Welcome," the gunman chuckled, flicking a lighter at the cigarette between his teeth. He was leaning back against a lamppost, and the long, straight line of his body, thrown into photo negative angles by the single flickering tongue of light, blended so easily into the dusky evening colors that he might've stepped out of an ink painting. "I enjoyed it too. Wish I could keep everything else the same, but have a coupla dogs and cats."

 

"Jigen."

 

"Maybe a garden. Garden'd be kinda nice."

 

"Jigen."

 

"Hmmm?"

 

" _Jigen_."

 

He didn't have the time or the will to protest as Goemon plucked the unlit cigarette from between his lips and kissed him, hard. He made a surprised noise, and the samurai took the opportunity to stick his tongue in his mouth, his strong-fingered hands fisting the fabric of Jigen's jacket to pull him closer still. Goemon was as artless at kissing as he was skilled at swordplay, but the intensity of it made up for absolutely anything else.

 

Jigen had a lot of old friends.

 

...Maybe a better way of putting it was that Jigen knew a lot of people.

 

And any time one of them turned up again, floating to the surface like the flotsam from a shipwreck, there was a long, balancing moment of silence, when they might either laugh and ask him how it was going, slapping him on the back and chatting about old times, or they might try to kill him, hands darting for guns, and he'd been faster than any of them so far, _so far_ , but there was no way of knowing which of those options it'd be. He'd grown to know and love and hate that feeling, the space between heartbeats, the sensation of falling along a long, wavering note that would resolve itself into explosive mirth or exploding gunpowder.

 

Kissing Goemon felt like that, that balancing act between death or laughter, a strung-tight moment of tension stretched into endless breaths and vibrating like a plucked violin string.

 

Jigen broke away first, gasping a little. Damn, no matter how many times, it always left him a little breathless.

 

"Goemon," he panted, "d'you..."

 

"Home," the samurai demanded, and damn if he didn't look a little smug, Jigen noted with an abstracted kind of amusement. " _Now_."

 

They made it back to the apartment in record time, brushing faintly against each other but not touching, hardly even looking at each other, until they were inside and Jigen's broad, calloused hands were splayed across Goemon's shoulders and Goemon was panting into his lips, fingers tangling in the gunman's dark hair, and the younger man's soft, bitten-off, half-breathed moans somehow sounded even more wanton than if he hadn't tried to hold back. Coming up for air, Goemon stepped towards the unoccupied bedroom, but Jigen caught his arm.

 

"Shower," he muttered, nodding towards the mahogany door to the other bedroom. They could hear Lupin snoring faintly from behind it, the soft red-gold spirals of sound drifting around the edges of the doorframe. Goemon nodded reluctantly, shedding his cat-hair-covered shirt faster than Jigen ever would've thought possible, given how hard it usually was to persuade him out of his hakama and into a disguise. Jigen wasn't far behind him, fumbling the buttons of his dress shirt loose and toeing off his shoes as quickly as he could. By the time he'd followed Goemon into the spacious, gold-encrusted bathroom, the swordsman had the water going full blast and filling the space with steam, and was clearly fighting uncharacteristic impatience as Jigen finally stepped out of his socks and boxers and into the shower.

 

Goemon would blame it on the alcohol later, and Jigen on the late hour, but neither of them lasted long, collapsing into a panting mess of warm water and shaking legs as they rode out the adrenaline crash of shared orgasm. Although he was still shuddering through the last waves of pleasure and stimulation and couldn't have gotten hard again for all the gold in Fort Knox, Jigen couldn't help but think that Goemon, flushed and dripping and clinging to the wall to stay upright, his iron-clad dignity temporarily forgotten, was one of the most mind-bendingly gorgeous sights he'd ever been lucky enough to view.

 

Less urgently now, they started using the shower for its intended purpose and washing up, scrubbing away any lingering traces of cat dander and greasepaint, trailing soap-slick fingers over each other's many scars and along the curve of narrow hips and thin, muscled thighs. It was far more intimate than it was erotic, and Jigen kind of loved that this was something they could do, that _he_ could do: being allowed to touch someone like this, the leisure and safety to enjoy the shared warmth afterwards, rather than a quick, frantic fuck, ears pricked for any hint that they'd been found out, finishing and zipping his pants back on over his still-leaking prick so that he could get out the door that much faster. That had been enough, when he was younger, and hadn't thought he had any prospects of anything better. This, instead - it was like comparing cheap lite beer to finely aged scotch. Both would get you drunk, sure, but there was just no comparing the heady intoxication of knowing that his partners would still be here in the morning, would want to see him again after this.

 

Goemon was scrubbing one of Fujiko's flowered shampoos through his sleek ink spill of hair, and, feeling unusually sentimental, Jigen traced a hand down his spine, bent to press a kiss against one sharp shoulder blade. The samurai gave him a curious look, but Jigen didn't feel like explaining, just watched him rinse the last of the fragrant suds down the drain and handed him a towel when he finally, reluctantly, turned off the torrent of water.

 

Lupin was splayed like a starfish in the middle of the bed, mouth open and drooling, muttering something about an octopus. Jigen gently nudged him over, lying down beside him and pulling the thief against him with obvious care, and as he settled with his back against the headboard, Goemon was struck by the contrast between them. Not so much body type or skin tone, though the differences were obvious, but scarring. He and Jigen both bore the marks of their respective trades, cut and burned and punctured across their bodies. Lupin did have a handful of scars, scattered across his skin like constellations, but fewer than either of them, whether by luck or skill or something else, Goemon couldn't say. He and Jigen had long since decided, quietly, between the two of them, that they'd have to do everything in their power to keep it that way. Lupin was someone far too precious to be destroyed by stray gunfire or lost to an assassin's knife.

 

That resolution came back to him with particular weight as he watched Jigen slowly drift to sleep, Lupin snoring lightly against his chest. This was a strange group that he had found himself in, but they were dear to him, and he would allow nothing and no one to harm them if he could prevent it. He and his sword and his perseverance would have to be equal to the challenge.

 

***********************************

 

Lupin yawned and shivered awake around 5 a.m., groping for the blanket. He'd found a corner of it, and was about to roll himself into it and go back to sleep, when he noticed the bony knee digging into his back, and the lean white form, past the gently snoring pile of blankets that had to be Jigen.

 

A bud of warmth bloomed through his chest as his sleep-addled brain slowly pieced together what he was seeing. They'd come back after all. Not that he'd expected them to leave forever or anything...but it was still nice. Jigen usually just flopped onto the couch and slept there, and actually getting Goemon into a bed to sleep usually took as much effort as getting him _out_ of the traditional samurai clothing. That they were here meant they'd made an effort.

 

Both of them tended to be early risers though, if he went back to bed now, they might be gone by the time he woke up again, and he wanted to be able to luxuriate in this. After a moment's sleepy thought, he just draped himself over both of them. There. Now he was nicely warm, and they couldn't get up without waking him up in the process. Perfect.

 

It was a few hours later that Jigen stirred, the rising sunlight prickling across his eyelids. Dammit, he must've forgotten to put his hat over his face. Grumbling, he started feeling around for it...but his fingers met warm skin instead, and a strange sense of weight and heat pressing on his chest. Startled, he squinted into the sunlight.

 

_Oh._

 

It was rare, that Goemon let his guard down enough to actually _sleep_ \- sprawled out, mouth open, drooling, grunting sleep - instead of just catnaps while meditating. When he did though, he got even cuddlier than Lupin did, and Jigen had woken to find the samurai twined around him like a vine, face buried in the juncture of his neck and his shoulder, with Lupin sprawled over both of them, snoring like he'd inhaled a swarm of cicadas. Waking up being cuddled by two exceptionally attractive younger men...he felt like a bit of a lecherous old man, for enjoying this as much as he did.

 

_Two very attractive younger men who are dating you. On purpose, even. I think you're allowed to be turned on by that._

 

No matter how easily the rest of the gang had slipped into their joint relationship though, it had never come quite as easily to him. It felt...not unnatural, not exactly, but, unrealistic. Just too much. He had long since given up the search for _anyone_ who found him attractive enough to be worth a relationship, who could tolerate his moodiness and his temper and his dizzying array of hangups. And now, without even too much searching on his part, he had an entire family of them. It felt too easy, as though it was liable to be yanked away again at any moment. Most days, he still had trouble believing that he was allowed to be this happy.

 

_Am I a terrible person? For enjoying this?_

 

Well...obviously, yes. Not for _this,_ exactly, but he was a thief and a murderer, and being a _former_ hitman didn't erase the sins of his past life. Those bloodstains didn't come off easily.

 

Then Lupin yawned and stretched, moving on top of him like an ocean current, and curled around him with such a warm, contented noise that he couldn't quite fight the smile that twitched the edges of his lips. Okay, fine. If Lupin and Goemon and hell, sure, even Fujiko all liked him, he couldn't be a complete waste of a person. There had to be something there worth keeping. He could feel Goemon wake up next to him and shift from 'sprawled out sleeping' pose to cross-legged, his feet tucked neatly under him, in one smooth moment, and Lupin let out another happy, sleepy sigh, his calloused hands tracing lazily over Jigen's skin.

 

"You're r'lly warm," the thief murmured happily. "Don' move."

 

"Don't think I can, with you on top of me like this," Jigen informed him, and Lupin grinned like a Cheshire cat, his eyes still closed.

 

"Perfect," he purred, and then he was kissing him, terrible morning breath and scratchy stubble and such obvious delight that Jigen couldn't help but kiss him back.

 

"You're cuddlier than usual," he commented as the thief stretched lavishly, somehow ending with both of his hands threaded through Jigen's hair.

 

"I'm making up for last night," Lupin grinned, laying back against his chest and continuing to work his fingers through the gunman's thick, dark hair. "Your hair's so fluffy in the morning!"

 

"Yeah, which is why I brush it flat," Jigen grumbled, but he didn't make more than a cursory effort to get up. It wasn't worth it to try and shift all one hundred and fifteen pounds of Lupin off him anyway. The man could cling like a tick when he wanted to, and this...wasn't entirely unpleasant, having Lupin's nimble fingers stroking along his scalp, carding gently through his hair and feeling the thief's lips against his chest quirk into a satisfied smile.

 

The moment ended when he coughed and sat up abruptly.

 

"Blech. Chest hair."

 

"You're the one who decided the best spot to be was directly on top of me," Jigen pointed out, and Lupin promptly squirmed over, worming his way into the space between Jigen and Goemon, the gunman making an annoyed noise as Lupin pushed him out of the warm spot. The skinny thief leaned up and attempted to start petting Goemon's hair the same way he had with Jigen, but the samurai deliberately shifted out of reach. Lupin pouted.

 

"Jigen lets me!"

 

"Yes, and I don't," Goemon told him with composure. He softened the rebuttal by leaning down to kiss Lupin, before picking up his cell phone from where he'd dropped it on the bedside table to check the time. He couldn't remember how many days it had been since he'd bothered charging it, but it still had enough battery to power up with a protesting squeak - and to receive texts, apparently, because there were several from Fujiko waiting for him.

 

"Mmmmph," Lupin grumbled, going back to kissing Jigen. A minute later, the gunman glanced over to see Goemon, his cheeks faintly pink, struggling to reply on the Latin script keyboard.

 

"What's Fujiko want?"

 

The samurai glanced up, startled.

 

"How do you know it's...?"

 

"'Cause you only blush like that when Lupin's teasing you, or Fujiko is," he said simply, finally pulling away from the thief enough to sit up. "And Lupin's been too busy makin' out with me, so it has to be Fujiko."

 

"She, ah..."

 

His blush got worse, so Jigen just grabbed the phone to check it himself, Lupin pulling his hand down so he could read it too.

 

_Figured you'd be getting up soon, even if Lupin won't let you out of bed just yet. Hope you three had a good night! ;)_

_I'll be back around ten a.m. Becca says hi!_

_Tell Jigen to check his damn phone, Robson's been asking about the grenade launcher all night._

_Let's work on the statues today, and figure out who's taking what bedroom tonight, I'm definitely stealing you tomorrow if Jigen and Lupin can't let you out of their sight tonight. <3_

_And no, Lupin, I'm still not going for all four of us at once, and I doubt Jigen is either. Not yet, anyway. ;)_

 

"She knows us way too well," Lupin commented, yawning and sprawling across both of their laps. "I'm definitely not planning on getting up for, _oh_ , at least another hour." This was a rare opportunity, and he wasn't about to let it pass him by.

 

Jigen ignored his pointed insinuation, powering up his phone. As predicted, he had at handful of pointedly polite texts from Robson insisting that he needed his RPG back. Seemed like Rebecca had another plot in the offing that he thought he'd need heavy firepower for.

 

"Fujiko might have both of you to herself tonight," he commented, interrupting Lupin's attempts to dictate messages to Fujiko and Goemon's efforts to remember how to spell in English. "I'll stick around to get a start on those statues, but getting to Prague and back'll take me most of the night. Might see if Wade's in town, long as I'm there," he remarked, sounding more cheerful at the prospect. "Thought he said he had a job in central Europe."

 

"All right," Lupin sighed, giving up the effort to see what Goemon was writing and flopping back down. "Just...Jigen?"

 

"Yeah?"

 

"..."

 

" _What?_ "

 

"...hurry back, okay?"

 

And it struck Jigen suddenly that Lupin had covered it with lewd jokes and his usual blistering self-assurance, but since they woke up, he really had been staying as close to him and Goemon as he possibly could. Hard on the heels of that thought came the soft, ember-warm glow, that he'd be missed, that there were people who'd look forward to him coming back.

 

"I will," he offered, leaning down to kiss Lupin, only for him to sling an arm around his shoulders, and yank both him and Goemon back down onto the mattress on top of him.

 

" _Good,_ " the thief told him vehemently. "Now, in the meantime..."

**Author's Note:**

> Because Jigen can't ever just be happy, dammit. I didn't mean to write angst, but he doesn't lend himself well to fluff. I think he needs Lupin to keep from falling into full-on Lady Macbeth territory.
> 
> The line about Lupin's chest hair is from QuillHeart. X)
> 
> So I just started watching Blue Jacket, and my favorite part of the circus episode is that while Lupin is interviewing all of the circus employees, Jigen is just chilling in the background, petting a tiger. The same tiger that we see trying to maul Fujiko in a flashback, so I'm going to assume that Jigen was either asking it how that went, or else he's just a cat person. X) That episode gets all of my love for providing evidence to support my headcanons that A) Jigen is an animal lover, and B), he'd probably be a pretty good photographer except that he likes shooting bullets better than film.
> 
> ...so yeah, this fic was sparked from that, and my desire to write something fluffy after the angst-fest that my last few fics in the works are turning out to be. There's a Green Jacket episode, the one with the emerald and the yacht, that establishes that Lupin and Fujiko reaaaally don't like cats. We also get a handful of Red Jacket episodes where Fujiko is cuddling dogs, so I'm going to assume that Lupin isn't really an animal person, Fujiko's a dog person, and Jigen and Goemon are 'cat, dog, yes please, any animal, bring them here and I will pet them' people. Enjoy. X)


End file.
